


Avengers: Age of Ultron Opinion Time

by anita58straycat



Category: Avengers: Age of Ultron - Fandom, Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: AOU spoilers, Multi, Spoilers, also i'm not a fan of brucenat, anti-joss whedon, but this is a review so..., marvel spoilers, movie review, please be aware of that, the pairing tag i wrote because i will talk about them a bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3856420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anita58straycat/pseuds/anita58straycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MAJOR SPOILER for Avengers: Age of Ultron.<br/>A review, of sorts. I just wanted to put some thoughts into words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Avengers: Age of Ultron Opinion Time

**Author's Note:**

> Also [here](http://koryuoftheriverflow.tumblr.com/post/117874716273/age-of-ultron-opinion-time) on my tumblr

Ok, this is gonna get ugly, I'm afraid... This doesn't have the pretense to be a review, mind. It's just me rambling. I'll try to stay cool and collected, but I can't make guarantees I won't snap here and there.

So, on Wednesday I finally watched AOU. Well, saying I'm disappointed would be an understatement.

A few info before I give my two cents:

1) I do like Joss's TV shows. I've watched everything he's done and Firefly is one of my favourite series to this day and it will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. I haven't read the stuff he wrote for Marvel, but I can safely say I'm familiar with his writing style and I generally (generally being the operative word here) appreciate it.

2) I went into this movie with a few fears of my own, spurned from the issues I have with Avengers, those issues consisting mainly in the not so spot-on characterization. Having watched the movie a few days after its release date I had the opportunity to read a couple of comments and alas get a bit spoiled. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper to begin with. I wasn't mad about being spoiled per se, but about the content of the spoilers itself.

So you see, I went into this movie not expecting much. Could have these prejudices influenced my reaction to the movie? Certainly. But would have I appreciated it more without all that negativity clouding my judgement? Absolutely not. If anything, it made me more receptive of all the things that felt wrong with it and for that I'm kind of grateful.

I think I'll start talking a bit about the plot in general and then the characters and their relationships.

Ok, here we go.

First of all, I think the pacing was weird. It felt off: some scenes got dragged on and on, too full of dialogue and long explanations. Others were too packed with action. Also the opening scene in the woods under the lab/fortress of Baron von Strucker really put me out. It was so fake! A lot of this movie seemed fake to me, and I'm not speaking solely about the special effects. Many action sequences later on looked like video games (not all of them, but enough), which is something I don't feel is true for Avengers.

The other thing which I find off putting is the creation of Ultron. The scene when he and Jarvis "battle"... I don't know. It gave the movie a twist I don't feel is right for the greater context AOU is set in, which is more down-to-earth. It's too comic book esque, if you get my drift. Looks like the wrong kind of science fiction movie (coupled with the b-movie apocalyptic fight scenes the feeling I got from it is of an uninspired spin-off of Terminator). It seems odd compared with the other MCU instalments, especially after the ones from last year. Cap2, it's been largely agreed, looks more like a thriller than a superhero movie. And, sure, Guardians of the Galaxy is in itself a sci-fi, but it is set in space, and there are aliens and spaceships and talking plants and all in all, it was supposed to be like that, that is its genre and I can accept it as a whole, no problem. I don't find anything wrong with the Infinity Stones either, because they were presented as other-worldly artefacts, their meaning explained by a demigod. And it seems I have more trouble accepting self-generated sentient robots dead set on world domination than aliens and magical gauntlets at this point. So maybe it is my problem and we should move on from here.

Now, there are other things I should talk about wrt the plot, but they'll come up while talking about the characters, so I'll move on to them.

I'll start with Ultron, since I was just talking about him (it...?) and the movie it's titled after him. He is not a good villain...? The whole: A.I. breaks free from its creator and wants to rule the world and rid it of its human parasites is a trope already widely used and also kind of boring, imo. It reminded me of Loki in Avengers and his attempt at ruling Midgard, even though he had slightly different reasons (and I still believe he kind of hoped to be defeated in order to be freed from Thanos's control and go back to Asgard. Because for all his talking about not having a home he wanted to go back, to the comfort of Frigga at least. But he is one of the characters that didn't feel right in Avengers and has changed a lot since Thor 1, not always for the best and not always coherently. See: his decision to take the throne in TDW. But I'm quite fond of the first Thor movie and anyway my grievances about Thor and Loki in the movies after that are a story for another day). Also Ultron's comparing himself to God... yeah. Not that great and not that new. His counterpart of sorts, Vision, I don't really know. I haven't made up my mind about it just yet, but if we consider Ultron a false messiah, then Vision is the true saviour in all this. In general I found Ultron and his storyline a bit trite.

Now Tony. Tony has grown up a lot since the time he sold weapons left and right, so why is he trying again to build something so dangerous? He should definitely know better, especially after the events of Cap2. We've seen what damage precautionary measures can cause. And this is another thing I don't understand. Steve was only mildly pissed off about Ultron. Oh, yes, he smashed a few wood logs while he was at it, but honestly, I was expecting a different reaction. But more on Steve in a moment. It is well known that Joss likes Tony, so it was only to be expected that he'll be at the centre of the events, but it seems like a step backwards in his character development. Always so cocky and self-assured, not unlike someone else may think of himself...

But no... the character Joss used to write himself in I think it was Bruce and the end result was dreadful. And the worst thing... he took Natasha down with him. A lot has been said about this, so I'll be brief, mostly because I'm still fuming with unsuppressed rage and I'm not sure I can be coherent. But he took a wonderful female character that had proved in Avengers and again in Cap2 her status as a hero and not just eye-candy and had made her entire storyline revolve around her not-quite-unrequited love for Bruce?! The only thing Nat seems to do in this movie is flirt, and it is all so out of nowhere... Hence why everyone kept commenting on that, like: you didn't see that coming? Lame! Why, not! I did not see that coming, because it fucking wasn't! And I'm not talking about clintasha, although yes, I am a little bit (I'm pissed about that too. The only good thing is that Laura's great. So thank the heavens for small mercies).

It's just that brucenat was completely unnecessary and I can't help thinking this was a very unsubtle attempt on Joss's part to write himself the recipient of the attention of a "strong female character" that he later on saves (from a situation she could have saved herself from easily in .5 seconds). The thing though that really maddens me is the revelation about her past in the Red Room. I was so excited about the flashbacks; they could have gone in a billion different directions with that and given Nat even more depths, and what did Joss chose to do? It's even too gross to say. And what for? To further the man pain of one Bruce Banner and because apparently it is indeed true that you can't be a woman and happy with yourself if you can't give your man children. What.the.fuck. Oh, but when Bruce accidentally lands on her breasts, that was hilarious, wasn't it? *sarcasm* And then he leaves her, because he's such a torn, conflicted soul and is friends with assassins, but is not one himself, so he doesn't fight because he knows he'll be the only winner (and he's so much smarter than everyone else) or some such bullshit I don't remember the exact lines of and I'm not sure I want to.

Oh, I almost forgot. It really pisses me off that Natasha didn't lift Mjolnir. Because in the trailers, when asked to lift the hammer to see whether she's worthy, she says that's a question she doesn't need answered. Well, that looked a lot like a Chekhov's gun to me. Why have her say that unless she would later on prove to be indeed worthy? I know I shouldn't, but she's the only Avenger who doesn't try and it's starting to look a bit sexist in my eyes, you know... It would have been great, the final proof she had wiped that red in her ledger, but apparently the honour of being as worthy as Thor goes to Vision. Whatever.

Steve was even more OOC in this movie, which would be amazing if it wasn't so horrible. A lot of this movie drew inspiration from Ultimates, I think, which, from the little I know of it, is on the whole kind of gross, so I don't understand why it was used as reference and it makes Steve look like a republican. Oh, the little speech he gave Bruce about Nat was really creepy. Steve would never say something like that! But, hey! He swears! What a rebel! Wow. He's a good little soldier, talks about Bucky for a nanosecond, but at least the vision with Peggy was cool and in the end he finds his home in a military base, which... hilarious! In general the image I got was that of Captain America, not Steve Rogers and we all know that "the thing that makes Captain America great is Steve Rogers", so there's that. I'm not interested in the interpretation that reads Cap as a grumpy old man, who never has fun, is conservative, always follows the rules and never says a bad word. And anyone who think he's all of these things is wrong. Sorry, I don't make the rules. If you're not ok with it, well...on va voir.

Now, my baby Thor. I was happy about his friendship with Steve and his mentioning Jane (she's doing something and not moping around, so yeah for that! Even though, testosterone indeed), but he's still not grieving and if someone doesn't hold him and tells him he can take a break I'll do it myself. It's still a bit unclear what his motivations for helping Vision were, but I'll take it as it comes for now.

Clint... when they told us he had a farm I thought about a safe place to hide and nothing more, certainly not kids and a pregnant wife. Laura was cool, though. I loved the little moments when he resembled more his comics-self with his dorkiness and deadpan sarcasm.

Last but not least: Pietro and Wanda. The only good thing, honestly, and even then, not that good. Aaron and Elizabeth are great, but why not cast people from the Balkans and be spared the fake accents? What is Sokovia? Why couldn't it be a real place, since, you know, Eastern Europe is a thing that exists? And why were they talking in English to their own people!? They were great though, and I know, I'm a very bad person, but I had a friend who went into the movie not knowing who Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver even were tell me that they seemed a bit too close to be siblings, so I think I can safely say that their relationship was a bit, shall we say, ambiguous (not unlike the comics. And I'm not talking merely about Ultimates, because again: gross).

I should have known someone would die, because it's a Whedon movie, so someone has to bite the dust. It just didn't occur to me that it would be one of the Avengers. I'm really sad, I keep thinking about my poor Pietro. And the moment he dies... Wanda's scream was gut-wrenching. Elizabeth was really great in that scene. And she can control reality, so Pietro won't stay dead long, I'm sure... (A girl can dream).

The dynamic between the team is the one Joss always uses: a group of misfits that come together to fight a greater evil. Ultron talks a lot about the cracks between the Avengers, that in the end they manage to overcome (like the Scooby gang in Buffy, Mal's crew in Firefly etc.). It would be endearing if it wasn't the same old story told over and over and twice in the same franchise now. I thought the team was fine after Avengers. Apparently not. That's not because the characters don't fit well with one another. It's because Joss hasn't seen the movies after his Avengers. That's the only explanation I can come up with. They all felt disconnected.

All in all, I don't envy the Russo, but I'm hopeful they'll do something to remedy this chaos. We'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I'm starting to dread Ant Man. I thought that one would be the first movie where Marvel would lose my interest. I'm even more scared now that AOU has won that race.

 


End file.
